August 24th finished the 5th year of this blog, which was noted in 2010 as one of the top film blogs of that year by MovieMaker magazine. It started with a film project called Travel Day and my efforts along with director Shirley Petchprapa to make the movie.
The 2009 project fell through when a producer dropped out of sight and the project ended. At that point I had a choice of dropping the blog or keep going. Since I've been in this business well over thirty years I figured I had enough stories to last a year or two.
I had Ghostkeeper, my first feature in 1980 and became forgotten and then resurrected as a DVD Anniversary, and other features of mine that fell through or are optioned to this day. There are stories that are personal, some are positive and some negative. But they were always interesting.
It turned out to be five years of stories.
During those five years, I gave readers a real insight into the business, both good and bad. One particular series of blogs was my TV series experience on a really bad show and with two producers and two other writers who gave me probably the worse experience I've ever had. But I survived that. You can find this beginning on March 15, 2010.
Looking through the blog I've done 500 posts and had approximately 50,000 page views and looking through them I've repeated myself now and then and saw projects come up and fall down, which is more common to writers than new writers think. A lot of us have projects that we started years ago, Emperor of Mars goes back at least 22 years and still not made.
When you look at a writer's credits you are not seeing all the projects that fell through because of money usually and it happens far more than getting movies made.
Still I think I've given you readers a real look into the business that I know well enough to talk about and my other sources are friends who are agents, directors and yes, a few writers. I talk about the WGA Christmas parties and my own travels as well as every aspect of this business from the writer's view.
So now, I'm going into my 6th year and hope you stay with me from time to time.
Friends not in the business ask me when I'll retire; my answer is always "When my face drops on my laptop keyboard."
And then I tell them that I want my laptop buried with me. When they ask why, I say "In case I get a good idea."
Writers work forever.
